ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 10, 1996 TAG: 9602120024
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
Fanny Sanrich lingered a moment Friday afternoon in front of a display case of German military artifacts at the Roanoke Valley History Museum.
"They bring back bad memories," said Sanrich, who lives in Roanoke but spent much of World War II as a Jewish teen-ager in Nazi-occupied Paris.
It was only through luck and the help of a kindly neighbor that she survived the war without being deported to a concentration camp, Sanrich said. "It was a good thing the Americans came when they did," she said. "There was not much luck left."
Sanrich and dozens of others were at the museum for the official opening of a World War II exhibit and a ceremony dedicating a time capsule about D-Day. The capsule, to be opened in 50 years, will be buried at the Roanoke War Memorial at Lee Plaza.
The World War II exhibit, erected with the help of a U.S. Defense Department grant, consists of three parts: D-Day; the war on the home front; and World War II poster art. The D-Day portion, which opened in early December, has drawn appreciative comments from visitors, museum Director Richard Loveland said.
In addition to photographs and artifacts, including period uniforms and weapons, the D-Day exhibit features a sand model of German defenses and the invading Allied armada at Omaha Beach. Men from Bedford, Martinsville and Roanoke in the Virginia National Guard 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division, led the assault on Omaha Beach, the site of D-Day's bloodiest fighting.
Among the home-front artifacts is a series of pictures showing construction in a matter of a few months of a massive explosive-manufacturing plant at Radford. The poster art, on loan from the George Marshall Foundation in Lexington, features many original works by artists such as Norman Rockwell.
The time capsule, a project of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, contains letters, photographs and other items from the museum's D-Day collection. It was the idea of the late John Will Creasy, a Roanoke artist, advertising executive and D-Day veteran. The city donated a bronze plaque, designed by Julie McDowell of Roanoke, that will cover the capsule.
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers told roughly 100 veterans and others at the ceremony that Roanoke was not burying an important memory but "dutifully honoring it."
Dan Karnes, commander of American Legion Post 3 in Salem and a Vietnam veteran, said the capsule "will commemorate the time in our country's history when many were called upon for tremendous sacrifice, and some gave their all."
For the veterans who died on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and those who survived, "let us never forget their total commitment to our land," Karnes said. "Let us promise that their sacrifice will never be forgotten by a grateful nation."
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. Bob Slaughter, chairman of theby CNBNational D-Day Foundation (from left), Roanoke Mayor David Bowers
and Dan Karnes, commander of American Legion Post No. 3, discuss the
D-Day time capsule to be buried at the Roanoke War Memorial on Lee
Plaza.